


We Have History

by DragonflyPrince



Category: Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Immortal, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator, an inability to healthily express feelings, debatable historical accuracy, kind of more like enemies and lovers simultaneously, only a little but better tagged
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:33:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26240434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonflyPrince/pseuds/DragonflyPrince
Summary: Mercutio is only at the engagement party to secretly say goodbye to the friends he will cutting out of his life before he disappears and starts again. He does not expect to find Tybalt there, his one-time enemy, whom he has not seen since the '80s. Given their history, perhaps he should have seen it coming. All at once, the half-lovers half-strangers have a choice to make, and a hundred memories to relive.
Relationships: Mercutio/Tybalt (Romeo and Juliet)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I won't lie - I did very little historical research for the middle section of this. I just went off things I vaguely thought I already knew. I promise I won't make a habit of that.

Mercutio strolled into the party like he was born to be there. Everything about him was perfect: his clothes, his hair, his attitude. He moved with the kind of grace that is learned over time, trained into you at great cost and effort. Nobody knew how he had managed it – how he moved like a soldier, like a dancer.

Soldiers didn’t move that way anymore. Fighting was a different kind of game. Mercutio was well out of it. He had had his last taste of combat.

Confidence was something you grew into. To tell the truth, Mercutio had never struggled with it in the first place but the years had aged it like oak, hardened it to iron. It wasn’t brittle like it had been in the beginning: strong, but easily snapped if you knew where to hit it. It was unshakeable, unmalleable, untouchable. Mercutio was past fear.

“Matt!” Josh ran forward to greet him with a one-armed hug. “Good to see you, man!”

Mercutio hugged him back. “Evening. Congratulations, mate. I’m so happy for you.”

Josh was newly engaged, and glowing with it. What a familiar sight it was, and how effectively it penetrated Mercutio’s cynicism. There was something about love. Just when you thought you didn’t believe in it, that you had seen all its pain and failures and known the rotten whore heart of it, you looked into the eyes of someone mad with something true and you believed all over again.

“Thanks, man.” Josh shone like a star, which was entirely uncharacteristic for a man whose usual expression was one of polite bewilderment. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. It’s been ages – but you haven’t aged a day, you jammy bastard.”

“As if I’d miss this.”

He nearly had. When the invitation came, for Josh’s engagement party to a woman Mercutio vaguely remembered him starting to date last time they saw one another, he had almost torn it up. Letting connections go was part of it all, and he was pushing the boundaries of what he could be with Josh without a serious conversation.

Maybe he’s been sentimental. Or maybe, more likely, he had been lonely. New York wasn’t the same place it used to be, and friends were harder to hold down. He was losing the fun, and that was fatal. That meant it was time to think big and move big. But the world had become so small. It was hard to imagine anywhere to start over that wouldn’t feel more or less the same.

Perhaps Papua New Guinea was the place for him. He’d been meaning to go there since the fifties. Or maybe he would try Ghana – he hadn’t been down into Africa in so long and the name was calling to him on the map.

But before he went, he was going to say goodbye, even if nobody he said goodbye to would realise it. So here he was: London, again, and back with Josh and Steve and a bunch of others he used to hang around with last time he was in England.

“How’s it going in old New York?” Josh asked eagerly. “We hardly ever hear from you! Living the high life, are you? Forgetting your old friends?”

Mercutio laughed easily. It came so naturally, that good-humoured lie. “As if I would! It’s not too bad. Got a new place on the East Side.”

“Maybe we’ll come and visit you some time, eh? Listen – I can’t hang around much longer, it’s shocking how many of Lily’s friends I don’t seem to have met yet. I’ll pass you over to Steve – hey, Steve!”

“It’s alright –” Mercutio began, but he was cut off.

“Alright!” Steve appeared out of nowhere and pounded him hard on the back. “Matt! My man!”

Steve hadn’t changed much. He had a new potbelly and a slight premature recession to his hairline but he was otherwise the same man who had once been a wild youth when Mercutio got it into his head to go back to university, just to see if he had missed out on anything important education-wise.

“You don’t look a day older!” Steve looked him up and down admiringly. “Must be that American glamour, hey?”

“Steve.” Mercutio thumped him back as manfully as he felt he could. “It’s good to see you.”

“I’ll say! You never talk, mate. Never mind – not important. Come on, leave Josh to the harpies. Let’s you and me grab a drink.”

Mercutio was only too happy to add alcohol into the mix. He had known this would hurt when he came here, so why was he fussing over that now? But there was something about Steve, who had always seemed such a kid, looking like a grown man that hurt him.

It wasn’t so bad. People got old. But it made him think of other people who had got old, and that made him feel as though he were at a funeral.

“I hear you’re a professor now,” he managed.

“Yeah! Wouldn’t believe it, would you?” Steve grinned. “Students don’t change though – same as they were when we were young.”

“Same as they’ve been for thousands of years.”

“Ha! I’ll bet you.”

He didn’t need to. Mercutio remembered.

“Oh, Matt, hey! You’ve got to meet this guy! Friend of mine!”

Mercutio looked up from his drink, and felt the world drop away from him.

“He’s practically the new Machiavelli. Real academic glamour boy. Dr Carson, this is my old friend, Matt. We used to raise hell when we were students. Matt, meet Dr Toby Carson.”

There he was. Standing just across the table. Close enough to reach out and touch. He looked the same – blissfully, gloriously, the same. He was still big, still muscular, with that golden hair that had only seemed to pale as the years passed. Even the look in those eyes was the same.

“Oh my god.” It was out before Mercutio could remember to play it cool. “It’s you.”

Tybalt smiled very slightly. “Matt. It’s been a while.”

Steve glanced from one to the other, his jaw dropping. “You two know each other?”

*

It had made so much sense, back in the beginning. Once they had figured out what they were, the only thing for it was to cling together – no matter how they really felt about one another. And that little town, barely more than a village, barely more than anything, was cradle to them, was anchor, always.

It had seemed so simple, that day by the water. Tybalt had kissed him even as they stood there, waist deep and naked. He hadn’t been called Tybalt then – it was funny how the early memories slipped and blurred together. Once upon a time, he had thought his memory infinite. Now he knew the fading, the fuzz of age. His own name was gone – and Tybalt’s too.

The memory of those times were haze and mist. There was the impression of the town, of the water, of the colour of the sky. The nights had been different then. The nights were always different. People didn’t seem to realise how fast the stars raced across the sky. There had been other people once – friends, perhaps. Maybe even family. But they had no faces and no names. Only him. Only Tybalt.

That day seemed dreamlike to him. He knew they had kissed in the water – or maybe he had imagined it. He knew Tybalt had pushed him down, crushed his body into the dust and half-spiked grass of the bank – or maybe that was a memory he had built for himself, long ago, too long to remember why he had done so.

He could always ask, perhaps. He could always bring it up some time – but they did not bring up that era of their past. It belonged somewhere sleeping, as if to disturb it would be to have it crumble away. Mercutio knew that feeling. He had picked things up before – old things, things he had loved and known – and had them fall to dust in his fingers.

Sometimes you didn’t notice the time passing. Sometimes it stood and slapped you in the face.

But something must have happened between them, something sweet and knowing, even if they went their separate ways because, when they met again, Mercutio had known him. He had looked him in the eyes and he had known him.

*

He was with the man himself, his one-time love, when they ran into each other again. Centuries had passed since the old days together. He had given up wondering why. It didn’t really matter. Other people slipped away, faded fast, withered like fruit, but not him. And not Tybalt. They had always known that. He could not remember learning it but he must have done, once.

Alexander was Mercutio’s great friend. He had changed everything. Life got so boring if you let it, but Alexander never did. After Athens lost its savour, Mercutio fell in with him. They hit it off at once. How could they not?

That was when Mercutio discovered that he was, in some part of him, a fighter. That battle might not bring joy simply from the blood and bruise of it, but that the perfectly plotted strategy, the intricate technique, just might.

Another day, another victory. Another meeting with conquered enemies. Mercutio had strolled in at Alexander’s side, part of the pack of advisors and soldiers, and he had felt the change in the air almost before he saw him.

Across the room, standing right-hand of the defeated, was a tall man, all shoulders, gleaming. The sun had burned his hair to something close to gold. His eyes were still wicked, still dark. Mercutio’s memory of those times might be mere snapshots, glimpses snatched, but that instant shone as clear as yesterday.

Tybalt, across the room. After all of these years. When their eyes met, he felt the tug of an anchor he had scarcely known existed.

It was only after the conversation, prompted by a sly comment from the great man himself, that Mercutio had taken the trouble to approach Tybalt, to get him alone.

“It’s you,” he said, idiotically.

“I know.”

For a moment, they had simply looked at one another.

“How…how have you been?” Mercutio said, as though that was the appropriate reaction.

“It wasn’t going too badly till your army came down on our heads.” Tybalt’s tone was light, as if all of this was no big deal. “What are you calling yourself these days? Melanthios?”

“That’s me. Tychon?”

“That’s what I chose.”

They stood staring for a long time, not close, feet of distance between them. Mercutio wanted to grab hold of him and cling on. He felt saner than he had in years. Tybalt was proof, walking proof, that the world was what he thought it was.

“How did you end up with the great Alexander?” Tybalt asked, voice dripping with contempt. “Having fun, are you?”

“A lot of fun,” Mercutio said cheerfully. “And you? Did you enjoy being defeated by us?”

“It was a novel experience, certainly. Is your role military or are you the entertainment?”

Mercutio knew what he was implying. “Both.”

“How enterprising of you.”

It was too much, trading sardonic remarks and veiled comments. It was too much after too many years. Mercutio grabbed Tybalt by the arm and tugged him down the corridor. His one-time enemy, one-time friend followed unresisting. Mercutio pulled him into his personal quarters.

“Tybalt…” He hadn’t used that name then. He’d used his real name, or what he’d thought of as his real name. But in memory, he came back to Tybalt. “It’s good to see you.”

“I’ve been studying,” Tybalt said, apropos of nothing. “Working my way up. I had quite a good career going before you came along and crushed it.”

“You might have one again,” Mercutio pointed out. “Alexander can be very…relaxed about who takes over once he’s stuck his name on something. You’re clever. There’ll be a place for you in his empire.”

“I don’t doubt it. You’ve been in Athens.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know you.”

Mercutio grinned. “Yeah, I’ve been in Athens. Got really into politics for a while – then dropped it. Was an actor for a while – that was pretty fun. Chilled with some people. Crazy ideas about the universe, philosophers, but some of them are great at parties.”

Tybalt grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him. It was rough and angry, too controlling, claiming everything. Mercutio melted into him with a startled little noise, let his lips part and his head tip back, unresisting. Tybalt kissed him ruthlessly, consumed him from the inside out. When he pulled back, Mercutio could not see straight.

“Oh. I forgot how good you were at that.”

Tybalt grinned, reckless. “Then you need reminding.”

The memory of the act itself was a blur. There had been kissing, and Tybalt’s hands everywhere, and Mercutio’s embarrassing little cry when his nipple was tugged. There had been his mouth around Tybalt’s cock, and there had been that moment on his knees, the slick of olive oil, the steady strength of Tybalt’s fingers as he patiently undid every knot upon his self-control.

And there had been moans and pleading, and words he was grateful he could not remember. And the act had been over. And Tybalt had left. That had been that. Mercutio had heard of him later – heard that he was true to his word, a fine politician working for the empire. But they had not seen one another. Not for a long time.

*

Mercutio loved his queen. He loved her the way he loved very few people. There was something unstoppable about her. He had always had a weakness for people who refused to acknowledge the odds against them. All the same, he was wary of her latest ploy.

Cleopatra might be the strongest woman he knew, but she was not exactly experienced in the lists of love. Julius, on the other hand, very much was. She might outshine him in political spirit, in cunning, in sheer audacity, but she would be weak where her emotions were concerned. Maybe that was why Mercutio insisted on staying so close to her.

He rather liked Julius. If the context were any different, he might have swapped allegiances the first time he met him. Being with Cleopatra felt rather like spending your entire life at a grand farewell party. It was a time of decadence, but a frantic time, a grasping time. Mercutio had been through enough regime changes to know the score. Something would be coming to an end soon, for better or for worse.

Maybe that was why he stuck so close to Cleo. She deserved better than a dying world.

He wished she had been there centuries ago. She could have been a goddess. She certainly looked like one that day, gleaming in gold and blue. She was not precisely beautiful, not the way the poets would have it, but she had something far better. In her grace, her poise, her sheer, focused, unrivalled arrogance, she had style.

Style outranks beauty. One of Mercutio’s first rules of society.

It was strangely formal, this royal courtship. Julius approached with a contingent of bodyguards. Cleo brought hers. There were a few stilted, pointed remarks, and then suddenly everybody was drinking fine wines and separating off to give the lovers some space to themselves. Mercutio had never been involved in anything quite like it before.

Maybe he wasn’t paying attention. Maybe he should have focused more. As it was, Tybalt saw him before he saw Tybalt. He heard the intake of breath though, and looked up. Cleo and Julius were making their preliminaries but he didn’t hear a word.

Tybalt was born to be a Roman soldier. Those legs – powerful, muscled, with thighs that could crush a melon. That perfect physique – Mars at his finest, broad without being bulky. His armour gleamed like his hair. His eyes – still so dark, still so bright – were wide in surprise, staring at him like he had never seen him before.

Mercutio stared back. The blood roared in his ears. He couldn’t move. Tybalt’s surprise slowly heated over into a predatory gleam. Mercutio was fixed to the spot, deaf and dumb to anything else. He didn’t even notice when the cue came for the parties to separate, and the various soldiers and attendants to make their own entertainment. He had to be tugged from the room.

He stumbled away, head reeling. He needed to return to his quarters. He needed to gather his thoughts. He needed to be alone. This could not be Tybalt, not here, not after hundreds of years. There were thousands of people in the world – millions of the damn things. How had he run into Tybalt again? And with the Romans? It was so typical. They were exactly his style.

Mercutio shut himself into his quarters and lowered his head into his hands. His breathing was jagged. His lungs seemed sharp. He didn’t hear the door opening, but he felt the hand that came down on the top of his head, exquisitely gently, and twisted fingers into his hair.

“Hello, Mercutio.”

He let out a startled little sound and jerked away. The hand on his hair yanked at the roots as it held firm, keeping him in place. Tybalt sat down beside him and softened his grip, made a caress of it.

“Fancy seeing you in a place like this.”

“You’re one of his soldiers.”

“And your one of her…well, what are you? It doesn’t seem to require any armour.”

Oh gods, yes, there was that too. His ceremonial costume didn’t seem exposing in a normal context but under Tybalt’s gaze, he was suddenly half-dressed. Tybalt lay a palm flat against his bare chest. Mercutio’s heart nearly leapt from his ribcage.

“I rather like it,” he drawled. “Very pretty.”

“How have you been?” Mercutio asked. “How did you end up with Julius?”

“Not important.” Tybalt’s hand stroked very slowly, traced the line of Mercutio’s muscles. “What’s important is asking you…have you missed me?”

“I’d have found you sooner if I missed you.” Mercutio gritted his teeth as sensations tingled through him, sending his brain haywire and blood rushing downwards. “It’s been centuries.”

“Mmm. You’ve aged well.” Tybalt leaned in and kissed him once again.

It was different this time. It was slow and possessive, as if they had all the time in the world. Mercutio gave it up to fate. He reached up and wrapped his hands around Tybalt’s face, held him steady, kissed him back like it was a competition. He was rewarded with a tiny little mewling sound, before Tybalt pressed a fist into the small of his back and flipped him effortlessly down.

“Stay there.”

Mercutio didn’t even have a chance to disobey. Tybalt was straddling his thighs, palms spread flat across his chest, and all Mercutio wanted to do was stay there forever. He was already hard. His heart was hammering away like it planned on carving out a new hollow amongst his organs. And Tybalt was just sitting there. Just smiling.

“What?” Mercutio snapped. “What do you want?”

“What do you want?” Tybalt countered. “You know, I wasn’t joking about the outfit. I really do like it. What is this, pretty boy? A collar? Do I need to rescue you from slavery?”

“It’s _ceremonial_ , arsehole. It’s jewellery.”

Tybalt slid two fingers up between the gold plate and the frantic fluttering of Mercutio’s pulse. His breath choked and died in his lungs. He didn’t dare move. Tybalt flexed his fingers, crushing his windpipe just a little more.

“I could do this till you turned purple,” he murmured. “I could do this till you died. You wouldn’t even stop me. You never do.”

He laughed suddenly and kissed Mercutio’s open airless mouth. He pulled back and hooked two fingers inside, tugging at his lower jaw, locked behind his teeth.

“You’re already starting to go blue. Your eyes are bulging like they’re going to burst. Does it feel like they will?”

Mercutio made a desperate strangled noise that was the best he could approximate for speech. He flapped his hands uselessly. His vision spotted. Tybalt laughed again and released him, sliding his fingers out from beneath the necklace. Mercutio gasped for breath, sucking it down like a dying man.

He had nearly been a dying man. Oh, he was in trouble. He should get out now.

“Lovely,” Tybalt purred.

“Fuck you,” Mercutio managed to spit out.

The movement happened so fast. That was the trouble with all of this – Mercutio might be a soldier, but Tybalt was better. Tybalt was always better. In one deft motion, he had Mercutio flat on his stomach, arms twisted beneath him, pinned and helpless. His weight returned to Mercutio’s thighs, holding him steady.

“I fully intend to fuck you. I’ll fuck you like my master is fucking your whore of a queen. Will you moan like she does? I’ve heard her.”

Mercutio squirmed. Some moral obligation prompted him to speak up in Cleo’s defence but his face was smashed into the mattress. No words came out.

“Has she been teaching you her tricks? I hear she sucks cock like a champion. Would you know? Has she gone near yours?”

Tybalt pulled away the wound strip of cloth that passed for Mercutio’s clothing. It had never felt such an inadequate protection. He tossed it aside impatiently and shifted his weight back. One hand pressed into the middle of Mercutio’s back, the other reached down between his thighs and shoved them roughly apart.

“Or will you be like Caesar? Hmm?” Tybalt idly traced his fingers over the back of Mercutio’s thighs, up the curve of his hip, dangerously close to the cleft of his arse. “He makes this noise when I fuck him – oh, it’s charming. You’ve never heard anything like him. Spreads his legs for me without a word. I have to say, you’re nothing on him.”

Mercutio managed to struggle round enough to free his face from the mattress. “Fuck you. Go mess with him if I’m not good enough.”

Tybalt laughed. “Oh, like you could stand that. I’m just saying…you’ve got a lot to live up to. The way he spreads his legs for me so willingly is such flattery. And he’ll get himself ready for me – fuck himself on his fingers to that he’s stretched out for my cock. You just don’t put the effort in.”

“I never even knew you were – oh!” Mercutio gasped as the warm drizzle of oil began to run between his legs.

“Never knew I was what?” Tybalt asked politely, stroking gentle circles around his arsehole. “Were you saying something important?”

“Fuck you,” Mercutio spat out. “Stop teasing.”

“Oh, you want me to get started?”

Tybalt shoved his finger deep into Mercutio’s hole, all the way up to the knuckle. He howled in pain and bit down hard on the mattress. It stung, too much too soon, too rough, too everything. Tybalt drew it out and shoved again. Mercutio screwed up his eyes against the tears and kept his jaw clenched.

“Like this?” Tybalt said, mildly. “Or do you need more?”

Another finger joined the first, hard and fast, stabbing like he was somehow going to kill Mercutio this way. At the last moment, he crooked his fingers and every muscle in Mercutio’s body tightened. Pleasure rocked through him like a wave, erasing the sting, forcing his jaw to release long enough to moan.

“Oh, you do need more?” Tybalt laughed. “Shall I stick my cock in you yet?”

“No,” Mercutio begged. “Please. Not yet. I – ugh!”

A third finger joined the other two, working fast, stretching and twisting, scraping too roughly over his prostate. Mercutio was hard as stone now, hard as temple columns. His dick was crushed against the mattress, pinned between him, unable to get any friction, any movement, any of what he needed.

Tybalt pulled back for a moment, dragged his fingers out. Mercutio groaned. The loss of the pain meant the loss of the pleasure. And Tybalt knew it, the bastard. Knew that he could make Mercutio beg.

“You know the crazy thing about you?” Tybalt said conversationally, even as Mercutio reached his hand down between his body and the mattress to grasp his aching cock. “You haven’t seen me in a few hundred years and you rolled over like it was nothing. Didn’t even hesitate. Do you even remember my name? I don’t remember yours. I remember screwing you – again and again. But I don’t know who you are.”

Before Mercutio could reply, hands gripped his hips hard enough to bruise and Tybalt thrust. Mercutio screamed. He couldn’t help himself. He had been stabbed and it hurt less than this. But Tybalt held him steady, even as he convulsed, even as he shuddered, until at last Mercutio was still and compliant, barely whimpering, and Tybalt was sheathed in him up to the hilt.

“You see?” he continued, as though nothing had happened. “I know I hate you. Do you remember that? Pretty sure you tried to kill me once. Or I tried to kill you. But what does that matter?”

He started to move his hips, shallowly at first. Mercutio moaned and pushed back against him.

“I don’t – I didn’t –”

“But this? You’re fine with this. In fact, you want it. You were desperate for it from the minute you saw me.”

Tybalt grabbed the golden necklace and yanked it back hard, dragging Mercutio’s head with it. He tried to yell but the sound was choked. Plate metal crushed his windpipe. His vision spotted.

“That’s a good whore,” Tybalt murmured, almost to himself. “Just you stay there.”

He thrust, hard and fast, a desperate rhythm. He seemed to be hitting a place so deep inside Mercutio that it reverberated around his soul. He could feel the tension building, even as his eyes went dark. Heat was coiling around his cock. He was going to come. He was going to come and Tybalt hadn’t even touched him there – he hadn’t even touched _himself_ there.

“I could do anything to you.” As if you prove his point, Tybalt tugged harder on the necklace. “You’d let me. You’d love it. You’re going to come like this, aren’t you? You’re going to surrender, because that’s what you always do. You love this, don’t you? Being hurt by me?”

Mercutio came, white-hot and blinding. He might have blacked out. It was hard to say. The next thing he knew, his face was falling forward onto the thin pillow, necklace released, as Tybalt came into him with a low animal growl.

Mercutio didn’t move. Couldn’t move. He shook like a leaf in a gale. He stayed completely still, frozen, gasping wildly for breath, the ache in his throat so bad that he didn’t dare speak. Tybalt pulled out of him and gazed for a moment in satisfaction at the mess he had made.

“I’ll say one thing for you,” he remarked. “None of the others let me treat them like this. You’re the only one who’s whore enough to take it. So in that way, you’re a hundred times better than Caesar.”

Tybalt bent down over him and kissed the back of his neck, quick and cursory. Mercutio whimpered. Everything hurt. He could feel Tybalt’s cum starting to slide out of him, trickle down his legs.

“I’m sure I’ll see you again, pretty boy. Thanks for this. It was…cathartic. Oh, and get yourself away from your queen here. Things will turn bad soon. Read the warning signs.”

He left. Mercutio lay alone for a long time, as sweat and fluids slowly dried to a crust. He ached like he never had before, and behind it all was a desperate emptiness, something crying out, screaming. But he didn’t know what for.

*

Mercutio lay under cover, flat on his back, staring. He was hungrier than he had been in a very long time, and his lungs hurt. That was a new one on him. Things must have been bad. He didn’t normally get sick.

The cover, such as it was, kept out the sun. It would do nothing against the rains if they ever came – but they hadn’t come. The sky had been red for so long, and merciless. The sun was a glowering eye, low and sullen. Mercutio’s little tent, made from a few blankets propped on driftwood, was scarcely more than a rather rigid bed. And he was hungry. Jupiter, but he was hungry.

He couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he was back there. Herculaneum. It had been such a good place, for such a short time. He had been happy there – with Flavia, and her family. Poor Flavia. She was going to die. He could feel it in his bones. She was going to go the same way as the villa, the garden, the vineyard slopes stretching away up the mountainside.

Mercutio had seen a lot of terrible things but he had not seen the rage of Vulcan before. He could still smell the sulphur. Sometimes, when he stopped trying not to, he could still feel the ash raining down on him, the terrible heat, the feeling like snow was laying itself down inside his lungs.

And now what? He’d lost everything in the fires. He had bet his whole life on Herculaneum – a new start. A perfect start. And it had been, for a while. He had started to dream that maybe this was where he was supposed to be, an interlude of rest, a moment of total peace. Then the pillar in the sky, and everything had left him once again.

There were hoofs outside. The tramp and jingle of bridles. Mercutio rolled upright almost immediately, crawling from his little tent like a rodent from a burrow. Horses meant money. Money might mean anything. If nothing else, horses might mean something he could steal. A horse could be sold or, in a pinch, eaten.

He staggered between the tents and shacks, chasing the noise. There weren’t many people around. Or, rather, there were, but they scarcely counted as people. Everyone was hopeless. They sat still, or they cried, or they foraged or hunted or begged for work. There wasn’t movement, not much. There certainly wasn’t laughter.

Mercutio had been hopeless a hundred times before. He knew how it was done. He knew how to cling on in a bad situation, how to find the laughter, how to play the music. But this was, admittedly, pretty bad, even for him. And he had to find those horses. He had to get out of here. He had to _eat_.

He stepped around the large, surprisingly complicated tent of a mismatched family he could only presume had adopted extra bodies in the aftermath, and there they were. Not the kind of horses that a man could steal, then. These were cavalry chargers, bright and shining, with every hock and fetlock perfect. A small crowd trailed after them, mostly children, hands outstretched. The soldiers ignored them.

Mercutio stood uselessly. If they weren’t throwing alms to the babies, they wouldn’t to him. What were they there for, anyway? What was the empire planning on doing for the volcano refugees? Set them up with a new life? He didn’t think so.

The soldier at the head of the little group wheeled his horse around, and that was when Mercutio saw him. His knees were weak. The bronze helmet covered the hair, and the armour had changed since last time, but it was him. It had to be him. Their gaze locked and Mercutio’s legs gave out completely.

When he came to, he was lying on something soft. There was a steady sting in his eye and a curiously cold ache to his limbs, here and there, unfamiliar. But when he forced his vision to focus, he saw red cloth, high up and sun-stained.

“Don’t try to pretend you’re not awake.”

The voice reached right down into his bones. Mercutio turned his head so fast that it tugged at every stiff muscle. Tybalt sat on his haunches beside the bed roll, armour unbuckled and head bared.

“You,” Mercutio managed, but his voice cracked.

“Easy now.” Tybalt placed a waterskin to his lips. “Tea’s not boiled yet. Water will have to do.”

Mercutio drank. He could feel every drop of it running through him, disturbing the little drifts of ash that seemed to have gathered in the corridors of his organs. By the time he was sated, he seemed to be swimming.

“Better.” Tybalt reached round behind him and held out a fig. “Eat.”

“I…”

“Shut up and eat.”

Mercutio ate. It tasted better than anything had done in a very long time. It tasted like summer – and like Herculaneum. He couldn’t help himself; he burst into tears. He cried until all the water he had drank seemed to have left through his eyes. He cried till he was shaking and boneless. Tybalt sat through it all, patient and unmoving, without a word or a gesture until Mercutio was still again.

“Were you in Pompeii?” he asked, eventually.

Mercutio’s voice cracked when he tried to speak. “Herculaneum.”

Even Tybalt could not stay stoic at that. The line of his mouth tightened. His eyes widened, just slightly.

“You made it out?”

“Got a horse, as soon as the pumice started coming down.” It hurt to say, hurt in more ways than one. “Tried to ride out by the road. Me and Flavia and…”

“Flavia your wife?”

“Betrothed.” Mercutio took a deep breath. “Roads were blocked by the time we got there. Lost my Flavia’s brother when somebody tried to steal the horse. Ended up taking a boat.”

It had been so much worse than he had the words for. It had felt like the end of the world. When Gaius had fallen in the fight…Mercutio’s memory shied away from the image. He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to know. He remembered his own voice screaming, screaming that Gaius was dead and that they had to run, run now, run for the shore. But he refused to remember Gaius’s breathing. He refused to remember those wild, roving eyes, searching for his, pleading.

“The ash was raining down. And the stones. And…” Mercutio broke off coughing. “I wanted to cross the bay. We didn’t make it. Boat was scuppered long before we even set sail.”

“You washed up to shore.”

“Swam.”

And hadn’t that been a nightmare in its own right. His back was nothing but scars now, each cut stinging and screaming with every moment of friction, every brush of fabric. The rocks and fire had rained down upon it. The surface of the sea had been thick, soup-like. Flavia had grown limp in his arms and he had swum, because what else was there? What else could he do? If he sank, would he even die?

On shore, there had been so little. He had taken Flavia to where the doctors gathered and demanded they help her, but she still hadn’t woken. She never would. He knew that, but he couldn’t let himself know it. Not yet. He wasn’t ready. He had stolen to make his tent. Stolen food. Fought a man for every drop of water he had consumed in the days since.

There was no food to be had, and no passage to anywhere else. No boats sailed. No carts passed. The hills stretching back were nothing but refugees, and every day more bodies washed up on the beaches.

Mercutio told Tybalt only what he could. Tybalt himself said nothing. He simply listened, and poured mint tea for them both.

Mercutio must have talked for hours, in cracked and shaky tones, in between mugs of mint tea and morsels of food, passed with a total lack of self-consciousness from Tybalt’s fingers to his mouth. He left the topic of the eruption fast. He talked about Flavia instead. He talked about the journey to Italy, how he had considered answering the call and going home but had chickened out at the last minute. He talked about everything that had happened to him since Julius and Cleo had breathed their last.

Tybalt barely spoke even once Mercutio’s well of conversation ran dry. He undressed him without preamble, only a few half-muttered instructions, moving Mercutio’s limbs like a wooden doll. With a brisk indifference, he tipped Mercutio onto his stomach and began the work, slow and careful, of rubbing salve into his many small wounds. Mercutio found himself lost for words, hissing occasionally at the sting, rendered numb.

Tybalt worked carefully from his neck down across his shoulders, following the smooth wings of his muscles, until he was massaging the backs of Mercutio’s thighs. It was no surprise when he moved higher again – and Mercutio was so far past protesting. In fact, he wanted it more than he could even speak. Despite the pain. Despite Flavia and all the promises he had made her. He just wanted to be touched. Just wanted to be known, for an instant, in this deeply unknowable world.

Tybalt soothed him with half-murmured sounds, barely words, as though he were a frightened animal. His fingers stroked over Mercutio’s hole, rubbed and circled with patient assurity. Mercutio whimpered and let his legs fall wider. His eyes fluttered closed. Tybalt did not rush him – not this time. He worked until Mercutio was trembling, so relaxed he could melt into the bedroll. Then he slipped the tip of his finger inside.

There was no pain, not this time. Not even as Tybalt pushed deeper. Only a pleasure that built slowly, like a gathering wave. Mercutio buried his face into the thin blanket and moaned. The sound barely escaped – more a breath than a noise. Tybalt worked a second finger in.

He found that place inside of him with ease – of course he did, he could have drawn a map to it. Mercutio’s body tightened momentarily, then shuddered back into looseness. Tybalt crooned wordlessly, stroked tight little circles, wound all of the tension left in Mercutio’s body into that one spot. His thighs quivered. His hands tightened spasmodically into fists.

When Mercutio came, it was slow and untidy, no great burst of heat but a steady sunrise. Tybalt massaged him through it, even as Mercutio stuttered and gasped into the blankets, even as ever muscle he had fluttered and trembled. He lay like a skinned beast, feeling half-dead and half-reborn.

Tybalt didn’t say a word, just kept up the stretching, the stroking, the circling. The burn as he slid his cock inside was barely felt. Mercutio scarcely shifted – just let himself fall limp and useless. Be used.

And even so, Tybalt’s motions were slow and steady, glacial in their speed and certainty. There was no tension left to build in Mercutio’s body, even as he hardened again, even as pleasure worked its way through him. Tybalt gasped and grunted, thrusting into him, pushing him firmly into the thin mattress.

When Mercutio came again, it almost hurt – but only almost. It seemed to wipe him clean. Tybalt collapsed on top of him, crushing him, skin to skin, every inch covered. Mercutio lay unprotestingly. He wanted to stay there forever. He wanted to be squashed, held, utterly pinned in place. The world had been spinning too quickly these past few weeks. He wanted to be held still.

He didn’t know when Tybalt left him. He was asleep long before then, and his exhaustion was so great that he didn’t wake for a long time. When he finally did, Tybalt was gone – completely gone. He left behind a purse of gold and a single name, scrawled in the dust. Mercutio was not too proud to take the money – nor too independent to follow a hint.

The name belonged to a ship’s captain. What understanding he had with Tybalt, Mercutio never did find out, but he agreed to take him far, far away from that terrible place.

*

Standing at the party, the world seemed to have faltered and switched directions in its spin. They were all flying back the other way, unwinding. Mercutio could barely speak through the dryness in his throat.

“Yes,” he managed. “We know each other.”


	2. Chapter Two

The bastard had such a ridiculous haircut. Tybalt wasn’t sure why that bothered him right now but it did. After all these years, he would like just once to see Mercutio in something other than the latest fashions – especially when the fashions were so ugly.

Focusing on that was easier than focusing on what it meant to see him. It was easier, too, to dwell on how his jeans didn’t fit quite right and the piercing in his ear had almost healed over. It had been new when they had last met, and every item Mercutio had worn had been tailored for him. Was he getting lazy? Or was he finally too old for vanity?

“Seriously?” Steve looked from one to the other. “I can’t believe it! Where did you meet?”

Trust Steve to have these kinds of connections. He was a decent chap, no genius but an intelligent and kind-hearted man. Tybalt had met a lot of people in his current academic career but there were few as genuine as Steve. What were the odds?”

“It was a long time ago,” Mercutio said quickly. “We knew each other as kids.”

Dangerous. Who knew what kind of backstory Mercutio had once given this man, and how was he ever to guess what persona Tybalt was cultivating? Besides, Steve would be a fool not to read the tension between them. What would he think? First love? Schoolyard bully reuniting with schoolyard victim? What else could account for an atmosphere you could bend steel around?

*

He had risen out of the fires like a devil. Of course he had – that was typical of the man. The last Tybalt had seen him, he had been half-dead on the ashes of Vesuvius. Now, apparently, he had made his way to Constantinople and was doing what he did best: wreaking havoc.

Oh, but he was pretty. He always was. That sun-darkened skin, those curls that begged to be tugged… There was soot on his face, ash smearing his clothes, and his eyes were wild and red from the fire’s heat. Tybalt’s horse cavorted beneath him, throwing back her head and screaming. Horses didn’t like fire – but Mercutio had been born in it, he was sure.

And what was to be next? He had his orders, and they were orders to kill. He was a soldier and Justinian was his emperor. There were to be no questions. But Mercutio…Mercutio was something else. To swing the sword and cut him down was impossible in a way he could not begin to analyse.

“You!”

The word burst from Mercutio’s mouth, hoarse and choked from the smoke. Tybalt forgot to think. He grabbed him by the arm as he passed and pulled. Mercutio was still light. He was a featherweight. It was no effort at all to fling him up into the saddle. Then he gave his poor steed exactly what she wanted and let her bolt.

There should have been time for regrets but there were not. The fires were behind them by the time they slowed. Mercutio clung to him mindlessly. It was crazy how he did that, how even after everything he just obeyed. Anybody in their right mind would have fought. They would have at least questioned. But Mercutio had accepted the kidnap as if it were nothing.

Constantinople was burning, and Tybalt was a deserter now. He would regret that properly later. He would certainly regret the city, which he had loved almost as he had once loved Rome. But the riots had tipped things in a strange direction and somehow Mercutio lurching out of the smoke had seemed like fate.

“Here.” He dropped down onto the street. “Get down.”

He all but dragged him. Mercutio’s legs folded up beneath him like a colt’s before he regained his balance. He wasn’t looking Tybalt in the eye but what did that matter? They had a safe house. The riots weren’t likely to spread out this far, and if they did….if they did, Tybalt would run again. It wouldn’t be the first time.

That was the trick to politics: knowing when to get out before the mobs arrived.

“Inside.”

He hustled him into the building. It was a grim little house, barely functional, but he had used it for a long time now. His grand town residence was one thing but it was no good for keeping secrets. Mercutio was a secret. This had been the only place to go.

“I was doing fine,” Mercutio said at last, all petulant like a child. “I was having fun.”

“Burning down my city?”

“In my defence, I wasn’t the one who started the fires. And it’s my city too.”

Tybalt bolted the door behind them. “I didn’t know you were in Constantinople.”

“I didn’t know you were, if it comes to that. Where have you been, since…?”

“Rome,” Tybalt said shortly. “For a long time. Gaul, briefly. Been moving around ever since.”

Mercutio sank into a chair. His eyes were streaming – not with tears precisely, just the ache from the smoke and cinders. Tybalt strode over to the pump to fill a pitcher of water.

“What about you?” he asked abruptly. “Where did you go?”

“Hispania, for a little while. To get things back together. Then down to Egypt.”

“I thought you were done with Egypt.”

“I was feeling nostalgic. I loved Egypt.”

Tybalt brought the water back to him and poured a little into a cup. Mercutio took it eagerly, tipping it down his scorched throat. Tybalt dipped a scrap of cloth in the rest and held it out.

“Wipe your eyes,” he ordered. “You look half-mad.”

“I am mad,” Mercutio said, as if it were habit, but he gently sponged the worst of the ash and redness away. “Are you going to get in trouble? For leaving your post?”

“I was getting ready to move on anyway.”

True, but not an answer. Mercutio knew it, but Tybalt wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction. Never mind explaining to the brat why he had done it. Never mind telling him how often he had thought of searching for him in the years since. Never mind how dearly he had regretted, on and off in the centuries, leaving him behind in the refugee camp.

He had never regretted leaving him before. But, then, Mercutio had never seemed vulnerable before. He was a fire imp, a spirit, skittering hither and thither, jumping from life to life, dancing atop the avalanche. To see him fallen had been an altogether new experience. It had shaken him.

“I wasn’t,” Mercutio said gloomily. “I loved it here.”

“You don’t have to leave.”

“After tonight, I’m pretty sure I will. I don’t like staying after things have burned.”

Did it make him remember the ashes from before? Not a good question to ask somebody. Tybalt let it lie.

“Where will you go?”

“East, I think.” Mercutio chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. “You?”

“West.” It was out too quickly, a reflex. “Back to Gaul.”

They sat in silence for a moment. It was eerie, somehow, after the chaos of the last few hours.

“What do you want?” Mercutio asked, eventually. “Why did you bring me here?”

There were a thousand things Tybalt wanted. He didn’t have the words for half of them. He settled for dragging Mercutio to his feet and kissing him. The man yielded against him with a small, pleased sound. For an instant, the world stopped turning. Everything ceased. They were still, and safe. Then Mercutio’s hips pushed against him, too close, and need shut out any moment, any ambience.

“Is there a bed in this place?” Mercutio’s voice cracked slightly.

Tybalt bit his lower lip, and released him. “This way.”

They stumbled their way up the stairs. Mercutio was already naked by the time Tybalt pushed him onto the bed. Their mouths found one another instantly. Tybalt kissed him hungrily. He wanted to eat him alive. He wanted to rip open his ribcage and finally grab hold of his still-beating heart.

It was needy, and desperate. Mercutio’s fingernails raked lines across Tybalt’s back. He bit deep into his shoulder, his neck, his throat, till he tasted blood. Their bodies bumped together too roughly, bruising. The air hung heavy with the scent of smoke. With the heat that flushed their bodies, it seemed for a moment as though they were burning alive.

There was no time for preparation. There was no time for thinking. Tybalt did not resist when Mercutio pushed him down onto the bed. He let his head fall back, and tangled his fist into his hair. Mercutio lapped at his cock, and swallowed him whole, too fast, too eager, choking himself. Tybalt groaned and tightened his grip.

The pace was relentless. It was as though Mercutio wanted to destroy him somehow, to draw his very soul out of him. The skilful tongue did its wicked work, the way it always had. When it pressed, just briefly, against the slit at the tip of Tybalt’s cock, he let out a sound so unholy he felt, for the first time in centuries, self-conscious.

It took all his strength to push himself up onto one elbow but he had to. He had to see that pretty face, hollow-cheeked and tear-stained, hard at work. Mercutio’s mouth was stretched obscenely. His eyes were intent, focused even as they watered, as though this was some great task he had set himself. Tybalt tugged as gently as he could at his hair – not gently enough, but it had the desired effect. Mercutio looked up at him.

Tybalt came down his throat with a desperate cry and Mercutio held his gaze, swallowed him down, accepted all of it. He didn’t cease his ministrations until Tybalt had nothing left to give. Then he pulled away slowly, a few last savouring drags of his tongue, and crawled up the bed. Tybalt grabbed him by the arms and pulled him down against him, caught his mouth. Their teeth knocked together as they kissed, too clumsy, too open, too wet. Tybalt bit him till he bled.

How they got into that position, Tybalt was never quite sure but soon enough Mercutio was lying curled against him. Tybalt’s face was buried in his hair, in the back of his neck. He kissed there, bit there, again and again, even as his hand reached round. Mercutio was hard at a single touch. Neither of them spoke. The only sound was Tybalt’s rough breathing, Mercutio’s frantic little mewls, and the slapping of flesh on flesh as Tybalt worked him off.

Mercutio came all over Tybalt’s hand, tensing and twisting like something was trying to escape from his skeleton. Tybalt reached up and passed his semen-soaked fingers into Mercutio’s open, gaping mouth. He suckled on them hungrily, licked them clean. Tybalt wanted to choke him with them. He wanted to keep him there forever.

There was no more conversation. They lay there for a long time: Tybalt’s chest to Mercutio’s back, legs tangled, hearts beating a clumsy counterpoint. There was nothing that could be said. Outside, Constantinople was burning. The riots would be over soon – people would be dead in their thousands. Justinian would win, Tybalt was sure of it, but he would not be there to enjoy it.

It didn’t matter. For a moment, there was stillness. For a moment, something lasted longer than a mere blink of the universe’s eye.

Mercutio was gone by morning. Tybalt was not surprised. In fact, he was relieved. There was a reason they never stayed. He looked at his bruises in the glass, and the rough scabbed scratches that reached down his sides from Mercutio’s frantic clawing. For a moment, he felt the echo of that touch, half-real.

Then he moved on. Because that was what you had to do, the morning after. That was what everybody had to do.

*

Tybalt liked Alfred. Serving him was a new experience. Rulers of all kinds had been his masters over the centuries but Alfred was something else. In a strange way, he reminded Tybalt most of Alexander – but without the moods, or the impulsivity. Alexander had been a genius; Alfred was wise.

He was not, currently, all that fond of Wessex or any of the surrounding lands but that could not be helped. It had been a long, harsh war they were fighting – and the losses sustained at Wareham had rocked them all. That had been his misstep as well as his king’s: trusting to the honour of the enemy. It seemed Guthrum did not want to fight fair.

But all of that was over now. A new world was beginning, and Alfred would be where he belonged once more. The cheering of the people as they took their places: the reeves, the ealdormen, and all the thegns like Tybalt himself. It would sustain him for centuries, he was sure. So rarely did he feel as though he were in the right, as though the outcome of a battle really mattered. For a moment there, he had been flying on the wings of righteousness.

Edington had been rough. There was no way around that. But victory always comes at a cost and time had hardened Tybalt to the horrors of battle. He had seen men die before. He knew what they were made of. Mostly it was red and soft. Sometimes, though, it seemed no more important than the straw they strung up for boys to practice stabbing. Sometimes men were nothing more than scarecrows.

Maybe he was getting dangerous. Maybe he was too far gone. Maybe that was the reason he didn’t even question it when Alfred set forward conversion to Christianity as part of the treaty’s condition. Maybe that was the reason he was so content to allow it, to let faith overthrow all the normal providers of security.

It had begun in Rome. No, it had begun in Constantinople. They had started doing that sort of thing. The old Romans, and the Macedonians, and everyone before…religion had mattered, but conversion had not. You converted subtly, by sheer force of numbers, of will, of time. There was none of this ritualised surrender.

But this was what they had come to: Alfred and his victorious army, ready to baptise Guthrum and his men. And maybe that was why. Maybe that was the reason Tybalt could feel it in the air, that feeling, like fate tugging at him. Maybe that was why he was scarcely even surprised when he saw Mercutio walking beside the Danes.

He hadn’t changed. The long hair suited him, but the clothes did not. His face was still as pretty as it had ever been, but there was an odd look to his eyes. He wasn’t flippant this time. He walked at Guthrum’s shoulder like he was meant to be there.

The rest of them were warriors. Mercutio had never, in Tybalt’s experience, been a warrior. He couldn’t tear his eyes away as they approached. And for some reason, when Mercutio met his gaze and recognised him, he felt sick to his stomach. There had never been rage before. No matter what he had done, there had never been that sort of _anger_ when they met again.

Blood roared in Tybalt’s ears. He couldn’t hear a word of what his king was saying. The baptism was about to begin – the ceremony he himself had undergone a long time ago. It had scarcely meant a thing to him, but suddenly the thought of it being done to Mercutio against his will made his skin crawl. Something about the situation was wrong in a way he had not understood till then.

It was some time before he could get him alone. Guthrum’s men stayed close together throughout the formalities. Mercutio never once left his master’s side. But eventually they were sent away, to be prepared for the ceremony, and Tybalt took his chance. He muttered his excuses and chased after his one-time enemy.

“Mercutio.”

He grabbed him by the arm. Guthrum and the rest were far enough away, but Mercutio jerked back like he had been burned.

“Get away from me.”

“We need to talk –”

“Stay. Away.”

Mercutio’s voice trembled with something unspeakable. If his eyes blazed any more, they would throw sparks. Tybalt took him roughly by the shoulders and shoved him up against a wall.

“You need to listen to me.”

“Let go of me.” Mercutio spat in his face – actually spat. “Run back to your master.”

“Stop!” Tybalt shook him. “Look at me!”

“Oh, I’m looking.” Mercutio was trembling under his hands, shaking like a leaf. “Get away from me, Tybalt. Stay far away.”

“I’m going to help you but you need to talk to me first.”

“Would you like me to swear my service?”

Tybalt had had enough. He hauled Mercutio along, still protesting, and shoved him into a room. With great finality, he dropped the bolt behind him.

“This your place?” Mercutio shrugged him off and looked around. “Treats you well, does he, your dear king?”

“Well enough. Listen –”

“Isn’t that always the way with you? You’ve always got to have a master. You find a king and serve them blindly, and when they’re dead, you go off and find another. Why is that?”

It was too true. Tybalt wasn’t ready to think about it.

“You’re not safe here.”

“Oh, you don’t say? They want me to swear service to some god of yours. Everyone seems to be his these days. Doing well for himself. Do you remember his beginnings?”

“Of course I remember. I…” Tybalt swallowed down his own anger, forced himself to stay calm. “Why are you with Guthrum?”

“Because I like him,” Mercutio said simply. “I like the Danes. It’s been fun.”

“You’re not exactly their usual warrior.”

“I’m barely a warrior. I’m…” Mercutio gestured vaguely, “more of a magician. And occasional accountant.”

“Accountant?”

“It turns out I’m good with numbers.”

They looked at one another for a long time. Neither of them spoke. Tybalt wanted it to be simple. He wanted to grab Mercutio as he had so many times before, pin him against something, bend him over something, do all the things he always wanted and walk away. But this wasn’t like that. This was new.

“Were you there?” he asked eventually. “At Wareham.”

Mercutio’s gaze slid away. “Yes.”

“Then you’ll know why we’re angry.”

“Yes.” Mercutio shuddered. “It was…a dishonourable thing.”

All at once, Tybalt saw. It was clear as daylight. “It was you.”

“Don’t.”

“You were the one who said to kill the hostages. How many of their little schemes were yours? You’ve learned a lot – you drove us to appalling lengths.”

“I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be. Those were good men you killed.”

“It’s war, Tybalt. You’ve killed a thousand good men.”

“That wasn’t battle. They were in your care.”

“They were enemy soldiers. What did it matter?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

Mercutio’s eyes snapped back to his. There was something feral in them, something wild. He bared his teeth when he spoke.

“I know that you always need somebody’s heel to run along at. I know you need a thousand rules because you’re terrified that the world doesn’t actually have any. I know you’re obsessive about honour, and that you change your mind about what honour is every time you change allegiance. And I know that the point of war isn’t to score points in some little game, Tybalt – it’s to win. And we were winning.”

Tybalt couldn’t help himself. He took a step backwards. “You’re lost now.”

“Funnily enough, I’d noticed that.”

“Don’t get baptised.”

“What?” There was still anger in Mercutio’s tone but he seemed to have lost the thread of his fury. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t get baptised. Don’t convert.”

“I don’t think I get the choice. Wasn’t that in the agreement? Guthrum – and his most loyal men. Well, that includes me. Can’t imagine how that happened.”

“Run. I’ll help you get out of Wedmore – I’ll help you get out of the kingdom. Cross back over to the continent and start again somewhere else.”

“So much for your grand ideas about loyalty.”

Tybalt could have strangled him. “You’re not a Dane, Mercutio. You’re not one of them – and you’re definitely not a Christian. So run. Get out whilst you still can.”

“And you? What will you do?”

“Work with Alfred. Rebuild. Don’t look at me like that – there is something to build here. This island could be…could be something wonderful. I know it. Alfred is the way to make it that. But there’s going to be ugly things at the start and this ceremony…I think this is one of them.”

Mercutio rubbed roughly at his eyes. He couldn’t be crying though – even Tybalt wouldn’t believe that of him.

“All this time and this is how I meet you?” he demanded. “Where have been all these years?”

“Since Constantinople?” Tybalt shivered at the memory. “I went west. Just like I told you. The world’s been changing fast.”

“So fast,” Mercutio murmured. “I came back looking for…I don’t know. Things that don’t exist anymore.”

“What about you? Did you go east?”

He nodded distractedly. “Joined the silk trade for a while. Got rich. Saw a lot of places. Travelled. Got bored eventually. Fell in with the Danes. I was having a lovely time up until we came here.”

That was the Mercutio he knew – travelling skitter-scatter through life, jumbling from one place to the next, dropping loyalties wherever he found them. And that, he realised, was what Mercutio had to be. He couldn’t swear an oath – even one he didn’t really mean. He couldn’t be baptised. Something about it would change him irreversibly. Something would be undone forever.

“Get away from here,” Tybalt said roughly. “Start again. Go east again.”

“I’m not ready yet.”

“Guthrum isn’t worth this.”

“Why do my loyalties matter less than yours?”

When had the gap between them closed? They were so close now that Tybalt couldn’t see all of his face at once. He was forced to focus on his eyes: so dark, so familiar. How many times had he looked into them? How many times had he seen them cry? They weren’t crying now. They should have been, but they weren’t.

It was Mercutio who moved. The kiss was almost tentative, delicate, his hands sliding up to press against Tybalt’s shoulders. Tybalt pushed deeper, wrapped one arm firmly around his waist, tangled the other into his hair. He took control, made an attack of it. Mercutio kissed back hungrily, folded against him.

It was sweeter than it had ever been before, on a more even footing. It frightened him. He was too close to surrender, too close to vulnerability. He tightened his grip and bent Mercutio backwards, forced him off-balance. The man’s mouth fell open in surprise and Tybalt took that as invitation.

One dear aggressive moment, one instant of familiarity, and Mercutio did something he had never done before. He pushed back. He shoved Tybalt away so roughly that, in his surprise, he let him. Mercutio stepped away, scrubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Enough,” he said quietly. “We have a ceremony to get to.”

“Don’t,” Tybalt warned. “Just get away from here.”

Mercutio walked a trifle unsteadily to the door. “Haven’t you realised yet that it is far too late for that?”

The ceremony, when it came, seemed agonisingly long. Tybalt played his part. He stood his ground. He watched, even as it killed him. Even though an instinct he didn’t understand screamed at him to grab Mercutio and run, just run, anywhere, anyhow. But he didn’t move. He didn’t act.

There was the water, and the oils, and the winding of the cloth, and the spoken words in dull Latin litany. Mercutio went through it all with his spine straight, his head held high. He kept his eyes on Tybalt, held his gaze as he swore his life away, swore allegiance he could never mean, swore loyalty he could never give.

He did it as though he were making some kind of a stand, as though he had something to say, as though binding himself as he had never been bound was a means of fighting. Surrender as defiance. And Tybalt shut his eyes against the sight.

*

“We were at school together for a while,” Tybalt said calmly. “I never thought to see you here, Matt. What are you up to these days?”

“Oh, this and that,” Mercutio said airily. “You’re a professor now?”

“He’s brilliant,” Steve hastened to say. “The finest political mind of a generation – isn’t that right, Toby?”

“It’s what they say,” Tybalt allowed, with a humble grin.

“But you’re not a politician?”

“I didn’t fancy it,” Tybalt said nonchalantly.

“That doesn’t seem like you.”

Tybalt smiled, thin and strained. Everything in him screamed to act somehow, anyhow. To kiss Mercutio. To kill him. To do something, anything, to break this terrible stillness, this void yawning between them.

“A lot’s changed,” he said succinctly.

“I’ll say.” Mercutio looked him up and down. “But you haven’t.”


	3. Chapter Three

Tybalt laughed lightly and the sound was so familiar that it hurt. Mercutio gripped the glass in his hand tighter, as if that might somehow anchor him.

“Hardly,” Tybalt said lightly. “So you were at university with Josh? It’s a small world.”

“Very small, apparently.”

*

They had met in so many ugly times, in so many terrible ways. They had collided in the most taut and fraught of settings. Most of the time, if they found one another, it was because something terrible was happening. But there were other times too. There was, after all, Thessalonica.

Mercutio wasn’t quite sure how he had ended up there, but the Empire seemed like the place to be. He had grown tired of the west. He wanted to push to Jerusalem – that had been the plan – but somehow he had ended up stuck. He wasn’t brave enough to return to Constantinople. He hated going back to places. But Thessalonica? It felt like it was just beginning.

It was strange how that happened. Sometimes ancient places felt brand new. Sometimes this life that grew so heavy and so long, that faded in his memory to blurs and nothingness so that he could no longer remember where it truly began, seemed to start all over again. It began again in Thessalonica.

He was rich. He had friends. He was surrounded by art – and he had almost forgotten how much he loved that. It seemed to have been centuries since he was involved in it so closely. The frantic war-drum beat of time passing seemed to have slowed to a gentle syncopation. Everything was alright – more alright than it had been in a very long time.

And that was when he saw him. Like it was nothing. Like people met all the time. Tybalt, walking down the street, with that golden hair gleaming and everything about him, unchanged, exactly as it had been back at Wedmore, so long ago now.

Tybalt did not see him. He finished a conversation with a street vendor and carried on walking. He was going to leave. He was going to pass right by and Mercutio would never even speak to him. A few hundred years would go before he had the chance again. Suddenly all the spitting fury of their previous meeting seemed so unimportant.

Mercutio didn’t notice himself start running. It happened all at once. He chased down the street, darting in and out of pedestrians, following that gleaming head as it wove in and out of the crowd up ahead. He couldn’t shout his name – didn’t dare. Who knew what he went by these days? But he had to catch up. He had to find him. He couldn’t lose him again.

In the end, he didn’t need to call him. Tybalt turned anyway, an expression of mild surprise on his face, like he heard someone shouting for him. There had been no shouting. But their eyes locked and the wild serendipity of life struck Mercutio with all its force as the last few paces between them disappeared.

“Tybalt,” he said breathlessly.

“Mercutio.”

The silence was too long but Mercutio scarcely dared break it. He didn’t know what to say.

“How have you been?” Tybalt asked, just when the pause was starting to get uncomfortable.

“Could be worse.”

“You’re doing well for yourself, I see.” His eyes raked over Mercutio’s body, taking in his fine attire.

“You don’t look as though you’re struggling either. What do you do these days?”

“I’m working in an advisory capacity for –”

Mercutio laughed. “Aren’t you always? Don’t you ever pick a life for yourself that’s just fun?”

Of course he didn’t. Fun was an alien concept to him. He should know better than to ask.

“Do you want to get dinner?”

“Do I want to what?”

“Do you want to get dinner?” Mercutio repeated. “I mean, do you want to have dinner? At my place?”

There was a strange look in Tybalt’s eye. Maybe he was remembering how they’d last met. Maybe he had been expecting more recriminations.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Dinner it is.”

If there was one thing Mercutio could provide, it was good food. This life of his was luxury. He had only the finest things in store, and all of them set before him at a moment’s notice. Tybalt took it all in with raised eyebrows, half-amused and half-impressed. Mercutio hoped he wasn’t imagining the impressed side of things.

“Where did you go, in the end?” he asked, as he helped himself to cold meats. “After Danelaw.”

Mercutio shrugged laconically. “East, of course. The only good place to be. Have you been to China?”

“Not yet.”

“You’d like it. They’re doing a lot over there. New things.” He hesitated. “Different things, at least.”

There was no point filling him in on all the details of his wild criss-crossing journey since they had last met. Mercutio had hardly stuck at any life for more than a decade. He had been back and forth across the continent several times already, restless.

“What brought you back to Thessalonica?”

“It seemed time. I wanted something…familiar.”

Mercutio couldn’t look him in the eye. He didn’t need to. If anybody in the world could understand the draw back to familiar lands, and yet the terror that kept him away from Athens, or Constantinople, or Rome, it was Tybalt. There was nothing worse than coming home to find that home no longer existed.

“How about you?” he said quickly. “Did things go according to plan?”

“Yes,” Tybalt admitted. “Alfred… It all worked out. It wasn’t perfect but…one day, I swear to you, that little island is going to rule the world.”

Mercutio snorted. “You’ve really got your heart set on that place? It seemed to be mostly rain to me.”

“And marshland,” Tybalt agreed. “But trust me. The future’s a long time – it’ll have its hour.”

“Where did you go after that?”

“Oh, I’ve been around. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Empire. It seemed…like the place to be.”

“Hasn’t it always been?”

“Ever since Caesar.”

Mercutio met his gaze then and felt his cheeks flush hot. That memory occupied a strange place in his mind. That indifference, and the way he had fought for breath…

“I have to admit, I like Thessalonica,” Tybalt said calmly. “It feels…awake.”

“Perpetual morning.”

“Precisely.”

Tybalt leaned slowly across and passed a piece of fruit, with his bare fingers, into Mercutio’s mouth. It never even occurred to him not to accept the gesture. He swallowed it down, his tongue brushing just for a moment against Tybalt’s thumb.

“Tell me something,” Tybalt commanded, “and I won’t ask again. Do you hate me?”

What kind of a question was that? What sort of answer could there be? In a thousand ways, there was nobody Mercutio loathed more. The things Tybalt had done to him over the years – and all the times he had left just when he was needed. The memories that were half-forgotten, just clouds of emotion unpinned from substance. And in a million more ways, he loved him, ways he dared not name, dared not even look at in the privacy of his own head. What could he possibly say? What way was there to quantify what they meant to one another?

“No,” Mercutio managed, and his voice broke around the word. “I don’t hate you.”

It was inevitable that Tybalt would kiss him then, and inevitable that Mercutio would yield as he always yielded. He let himself be tipped back against the cushions, kissed thoroughly and oh-so-sweetly, tasting of honey. He opened his mouth eagerly for Tybalt’s tongue, reached up to hold his shoulders, his neck, draw him in closer. He let his legs fall open, invited Tybalt’s knee up between them.

There were things a man of dignity and importance would do, things someone with a shred of self-respect might have bothered to say. But Mercutio was not those men. He simply wanted, and what he wanted he fully intended to have. Tybalt obliged him, pinned his wrists and kissed him, trailed his mouth down his jaw to bite in that precious space beneath his ear.

“You know there’s something wrong with you,” Tybalt murmured, like velvet, against his ear. “The way you do this.”

“Shut up,” Mercutio begged. “Please.”

Tybalt said nothing more. He undressed Mercutio with deft hands and kissed his bare chest. His tongue fluttered against Mercutio’s nipple and he moaned softly, arched his back. He closed his eyes and Tybalt laughed – but didn’t speak. He only licked again, then drew it into his mouth and sucked. Mercutio whimpered and pressed into him with as much force as he dared.

Slowly, slowly, Mercutio let himself be manhandled as he lay limp on the cushions, the picture of hedonistic submission. He accepted Tybalt’s cock past his lips without a murmur. He let his eyes fall closed, and worked. He had this down to a fine art now. He knew every movement like a litany, like prayer. He lay, and Tybalt lifted up his head by the hair and used him.

The sound Tybalt made as he came made Mercutio’s back arch off the cushions. He swallowed it down and he, god help him, he loved the taste. He let his eyes open then, dared to face Tybalt, who stood over him breathing hard, staring at him, like he was seeing something unfamiliar.

Mercutio’s hand strayed down to his own cock and he fumbled, gripped, tugged. The pleasure was thick and quiet, laden like a summer afternoon, stripped bare of frenzy or desperation. It took Tybalt a moment to recover himself enough to help out, calloused palms curving into place, stroking Mercutio to a release as sweet as it was familiar.

They sat there for a while, dishevelled, quiet. They cleaned their hands. They finished their meal. There was little else to be said, as conversation went. They traded small stories about shared places but that was all. No need to talk about histories. No need to touch on painful memories. This was Thessalonica, where everything was morning and the fruit was always ripe.

*

Mercutio hated how much he enjoyed gardening. It was the sort of thing the elderly did, and he might have lived a long time but he most certainly was not elderly. All the same he was, both literally and figuratively, in retirement, so perhaps he was allowed the slender satisfaction of watching his rosemary grow up strong and healthy.

The poppies were what captivated him. He had eaten their seeds on occasion, when the situation demanded it, but this wasn’t about that. They rose above the rest, bright and bold and glorious. What matter the tansy, the parsley, the sorrel, the various little bushes and tender flowers of muted colours, when the poppies shone like captured suns? Mercutio loved them with all this heart.

He was not Mercutio in those days. He was Brother Matthew. He had become what he always swore he would never be: a man of faith.

Faith in what, precisely, was hard to put his finger on. God, in whose name he had been baptised several times now, was complicated to him. It was hard to ignore the centuries in which the name had had no relevance at all, even as it now permeated every aspect of his existence. It was hard not to hate the name, in fact, remembering all that had happened since.

It was strange how ancient now that soft-spoken, angry young prophet seemed. Mercutio remembered hearing about him – remembered hearing about his death. It had been nothing. Prophets and messiahs died every month in those days. This one, though, he had been something else. Or perhaps he had been convenient. It was hard to say. Time blurred memory. What he remembered versus what he had been taught – that was a difficult knot to unravel.

The monastery was a choice made not out of servitude to any gods but out of a desperate desire for quiet. He needed space to think, and that was primarily what monasteries were for. There were prayers and services and all sorts of duties, but mostly Mercutio tended the garden and kept his voices internal. Memories he had thought long-lost rose again and again.

The chaos going on outside the monastery walls, the whole nonsense of Stephen and Maud, the war and all the entanglements thereof, did not touch him. He had time enough on his hands to think about thyme, and that would suffice.

But perhaps not everything had been beyond him. Perhaps he had felt the tension, the sense of a spring coiled tight or something wound about to unwind. It reached him even in seclusion. That could be the only reason why he was not surprised when the Abbot welcomed in, for a night, a man of the crown, and Mercutio looked up into Tybalt’s face.

He looked tired. He looked like a Norman lord, which he almost certainly was. Mercutio had not known him then but the Normans were exactly the kind of people Tybalt would get along with: martial, forward-looking, hierarchical, always pressing onwards. He would be Maud’s man, of course. Mercutio knew it like he knew the soil conditions best for growing rue.

“Brother Matthew, would you see to our guest?” The Abbot moseyed amongst the rows of plants like he always did, a small perambulating tent of Benedictine habit and tiny child-like feet. “The mint seems to be thriving.”

“Unfortunately.” Mercutio glared at the errant plant. “It threatens to strangle everything else.”

“We are all God’s creatures,” the Abbot said vaguely. “Even if we are plants. No doubt we all hope to be as strong in adversity as the mint.”

Tybalt had not spoken. He was staring at Mercutio like the ground had been ripped out from under him. Mercutio knew what he was feeling, but this time it was not there.

“I will take care of our guest.” His voice was perfectly level.

The Abbot blessed him absentmindedly and wandered off. He knew his duties, but he was getting vague around the edges. All too soon, an election would have to be held and Mercutio feared the Prior would ascend to the position. He never could like the Prior, who, in turn, despised him. He was the sort of man who had never once looked back, never once questioned his path in life. It was bad for a person, that certainty of purpose. A little doubt kept compassion warming on the soul’s stove.

“Mercutio.”

“Tybalt.” Mercutio watched him thoughtfully. “I should have thought you would be busy, crushing rebels.”

“Sometimes,” Tybalt allowed. “I’m only passing through.”

“You are Maud’s man.”

“Of course.” The barest promise of a smile lurked in Tybalt’s eyes. “Are you not?”

“Can’t you see?” Mercutio spread his hands to show off his habit. “I am God’s man.”

Tybalt laughed. “I can’t imagine…a monk, Mercutio? You?”

“It is a practical place to pass a few decades.”

“They’ll notice your youth.”

“They haven’t yet. Perhaps I merely keep well.” A trace of the old mischief reached his tongue. “Perhaps I am divinely blessed.”

“Perhaps you are.” Tybalt was too serious. “It’s not as though we know –”

“I am neglecting you. You will want me to show you somewhere to wash and rest before supper.”

“Mercutio.” Tybalt’s hand came down on his shoulder. “Look me in the eyes.”

Mercutio obeyed. It was remarkable how those eyes stayed the same. They should have aged. There should have been universes in them. But they were just as dark, and just as young, as they had been in Thessalonica, in Egypt, in the murky haze of ancient memory.

“There.” Tybalt smiled like a sunset. “That looks more like you.”

“You’re Norman,” Mercutio said bitterly. “Fought against the kin of your dear Alfred, did you?”

“Times change. Alfred was long gone.”

“Still have your heart set on this godforsaken island?”

“You came back here. Why?”

Why indeed? Mercutio had drifted ever since life grew too long in Thessalonica. The Empire had cradled him for a while but there was always more to see, always a changing world. In the end, England had seemed like the right place to try again. Naturally, therefore, he had ignored it and made his new home in Wales.

“It’s somewhere.” Mercutio shrugged noncommittedly. “Are you having fun in our little war?”

“Don’t talk treason to me. I don’t have time to punish you for it.” Tybalt brushed his golden hair back from his brow with a slender hand. He looked princely. “Why did you take the habit?”

He wanted to tell the truth, but he daren’t. It danced in his throat, but honesty with Tybalt was dangerous. He took the truth and held onto it, and then he left again and carried it away for centuries. Who knew what he did with it? Mercutio didn’t like that he trusted him.

“It isn’t so long now till supper.” Mercutio set down his little trowel. “I will show you a place to rest.”

All through supper, Mercutio felt Tybalt’s eyes watching him but he refused to look. He ate. He prayed. He was so devout that even the Prior could not have raised an objection. But once the meal was done and everybody making use of the hour until compline and the beginning of the Great Silence, Mercutio followed the tugging at his heart that was as quiet and gentle as it was unignorable.

Tybalt was waiting for him in the little cell near the gate set aside for guests. Of course he was. By now, they both knew.

“Talk to me,” Tybalt ordered. “Brother Matthew. Tell me why you are here.”

“I needed peace.” Mercutio sat neatly perched on the edge of the low bed. “I needed…a place to get my thoughts in order. Monasteries are good for that.”

“I hardly thought you would be one for such…joyless company.”

“On the contrary.” Humour twisted Mercutio’s smile against his will. “There are plenty of reasons a man might join a monastery, God aside, and some of them work greatly to my advantage.”

Tybalt laughed low. “Blasphemy. From a brother?”

“It happens.” Mercutio shrugged. “I will apologise for it later. That’s the bliss of confession.”

“That sort of cynicism is scarcely any better.”

“And you?” Mercutio challenged. “For the Empress Maud, are you? I should have thought Stephen himself more to your taste but naturally…”

Tybalt clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “You have spoken blasphemy to me; I shall speak treason to you. There is little enough to choose between either of them as a ruler. Stephen would serve well in his place – he’s a decent, robust sort of a man. Not bright but, then, neither is she particularly. If it were a question of England, I would say Stephen’s natural succession would have better unified the uncertain barony.”

“But?”

“But if there is little to say for our two prospective monarchs, there is a great deal to be said about keeping one’s word. I swore an oath to King Henry that I would see his granddaughter on the throne, and I intend to keep it. For better or for worse.”

“What a noble cause to waste your life on.”

“You think we will lose?”

“I don’t think the men of England will settle for Maud when they could have Stephen. He is what they want a king to be. And he has already been crowned.”

Tybalt laughed softly. “You have no faith in my abilities.”

“Even you lose sometimes. Often, I seem to recall. It hardly matters.” Mercutio folded his hands neatly in his lap. “I shall wait out the war here, and refrain from taking sides.”

“So sedate,” Tybalt marvelled. “You were a wealthy artist last I saw you. Hedonism, and experimentation. Now frugality and deprivation? By choice, Mercutio? By choice?”

“I told you. I have things to think about.”

“What things.”

“My son died.”

Silence yawned between them, greater than any silence Mercutio had ever known. He couldn’t feel Tybalt’s reaction. He couldn’t judge it, and he dared not look to see.

“We cannot have sons.”

“I did.”

“No. We don’t have children. If…if we did, history would be littered with them. We’ve neither of us been…celibate.”

Mercutio twisted his hands together to stop them shaking. “He was not mine. But in the eyes of…oh, everyone, everyone in the world, I was his father.”

Tybalt said nothing. The truth he had not been able to share begged to spill out into the quiet.

“Wales,” Mercutio blurted out. “Wales is…it’s a wonderful country. Don’t you think?”

“Pagan,” Tybalt said briefly. “No respect for monarchy. No respect for money.”

“They don’t need it.” Mercutio grinned. “Never have. And they can’t stand Englishmen. But I’m not English. I was an outlander but…I found a place there. As a bondsman to a local lord. Life was…good. I should have gone back to farming sooner. I hadn’t realised how I missed it.”

Tybalt did not answer that. Mercutio knew without asking that his sentiments about agriculture were not shared.

“I met a woman. Anwen. She was…oh, she was the loveliest thing. Hair like polished oak, and these wide, clear eyes, and she saw through me. Every time. She was young, and unmarried, and pregnant. Nobody knew about that yet but…I knew. Well, the father was long gone so I married her and we said it was mine and she never had to be ruined and nobody had to know. My lord was forgiving. We arranged my freedom, and Anwen and I… Tybalt, the whole world was in that valley. The Garden of Eden was in Wales, I am sure of it.”

“Didn’t you tell me once you fancied it would have been in what is now Spain?”

“I changed my mind. Anwen gave birth to a son. Peredur. The finest little boy, and _my_ son. Mine. I’ve never…I’ve married before, of course, but it wasn’t like that. This was a family. I could have lived that life forever. I did, for long enough for people to start to wonder about me. But nobody said anything. People don’t actually care very much, it turns out, if you never seem to age.

“Peredur was seventeen. He was the most remarkable young man. He could have gone far. He would have gone far. My lord’s daughter had a soft spot for him. But fever came round the valley. Isn’t that always the way? There’s always a fever, or an ague, or something foul.”

The memory of it turned his stomach. It seemed like the world was ending. The whole valley fell ill, one after another, and so few got up again. Decimated. And there he was, hale and healthy as always, desperately trying to nurse Anwen, to revive his son, watching them both die under his hands and doing nothing, knowing nothing, no power in him to save them…

“I should have stayed to rebuild. I should have helped. But I…could not stay. Not there. I needed somewhere to grieve and the Benedictine order is an excellent place for grieving. Are you satisfied now?”

Tybalt said nothing. There were inches between them on the bed, and years filling the empty spaces. He could not understand. He could not know what it had been to watch Peredur grow. The boy should have outlived the stars.

“I’m sorry.”

He could have said anything else and Mercutio would have walked away, confession spilled and heart more or less intact. But this hurt. This broke like nothing else could. He should be done with tears to cry over Anwen and the life that was, but here they were again. Tybalt’s arm was around his shoulders, clutching him, crushing him. Mercutio buried his head into his shoulder and wept.

The bell sounded for compline. It was remarkable how Mercutio placed the mask back on, became Brother Matthew again, kept his disguise intact. It was amazing how nobody saw his swollen eyes. But once the service was over, and silence reigned over the monastery, Mercutio slipped stealthily down the empty cloisters and back to familiarity, which hurt and healed in equal measure.

He stayed there, in Tybalt’s arms, till matins.

*

“Well,” Steve cleared his throat. “I’d better go do the rounds. Lots of people here I’m in constant danger of forgetting. Leave you two to catch up, eh?”

He left rather more quickly than Mercutio would have liked, but goodbyes and last remembrances with old friends could wait. Tybalt was here. It hadn’t even been that long since they had seen one another last, but somehow it seemed like worlds away.

“Well.” Tybalt took a deep breath. “Mercutio. After all this time.”

“Tybalt.” The word caught in Mercutio’s throat. “How have you been?”


End file.
